—Edgar A. Poe.

At its lower end, as the mountains in the range we have crossed begin to grow indistinct in the distance, the Tomichi valley pushes aside the hills which have hitherto confined it, and broadens into a wide, grassy plateau, encircled by mountains, in the center of which stands Gunnison, the chief town of Western Colorado. Westward, where the river comes down, sculptured cliffs rise near and abrupt; but elsewhere the mountains are far away enough to make invisible all their lesser characteristics. Those to the north and south east have their long line of irregular summits capped with snow; but to the west the ranges grow less rugged and more rounded, while between the hills runs the valley occupied by the Gunnison river on its way to the Grand, and by which the railway enters the rich farming lands of the newly opened reservation and the territory of Utah.

Drawing rapidly nearer the center of the plateau, we approached the city and perceived that it consisted of two distinct parts, with a gap of half a mile between them. Then a new freight-house cut off the view and we came to a stoppage in one of the busiest “yards” outside of Denver.

The town, as I have said, stands in the middle of a level park, at an altitude of about 8,000 feet above the sea. There is room enough “to hold New York City,” as the people are fond of saying. No stream waters the middle of this area, but skirting the further edge, just under the bluffs, which on every one of these bright summer evenings

runs the Gunnison river, through a bosky avenue of full-foliaged trees and thickly interlaced underbrush. Away to the southward of the town again, the Tomichi curves about the base of rounded, plush tinted hills that look like the backs of gigantic elephants. I have called the first of these streams the Gunnison, but if you follow it up a little way you will come to repeated forkings known as East river, Taylor river, Ohio creek, and so on. I believe, therefore, that properly the Gunnison does not attain individuality and deserve its name until all this cluster of northern tributaries joins with the Tomichi, just below the town, and the united and largely increased stream flows independently onward.

The town began in two parts and became the shape of a dumb-bell, the handle represented by Tomichi avenues. The knobs of town at each end are rival districts known as Gunnison and West Gunnison, but the former is the larger, seems to have the start, and has secured such distinctions as the post-office, the banks, the court-house, the high school and the principal newspapers. These, with several of the mercantile establishments, show fine structures of brick and stone, the latter being a white sandstone of great excellence for building purposes, which abounds in the buttes on the edge of the plateau. The majority of the houses, both for business and for residence, however, are frame buildings. Some are of pretentious size, and many prettily decorated, so that we do not know, a cleaner, more regular, cosy-looking city in the state than this. The divided appearance is gradually disappearing by increased building between, which proceeds with amazing rapidity.

The history of this valley and town is entertaining. In the early days of Rocky Mountain exploration, this whole region was known as the Grand River country, its noblest stream, now called the Gunnison river, then being known as the South Fork of the Grand. Of its history, or its geography, as I have intimated, little has been known until very recent times. It is recorded that in 1845, ex-Governor Gilpin, then a mere lad, traversed the entire length of the river valley from west to east, on his return from Oregon to St. Louis. “Having crossed southern Utah by an old Spanish trail he pushed his way up through the valleys of the South Fork of the Grand, crossing the divide very near the southeastern corner of what is now Gunnison county. Although pursued relentlessly by savages he was enthusiastic over the results of his trip and embodied the knowledge so obtained in a map which is now on file in Denver. The interval following Governor Gilpin’s exploration between 1845 and 1853 is entirely an historical blank, only vague Indian stories being given out by occasional trappers and by the Mormons, who joined in relating the beauty and richness of the country.

“In 1853 Captain Gunnison, a gallant officer, following Rock creek up to its head, discovered a nobler stream coursing southward from the Elk mountains. This stream cost him his life. As he was exploring it, he was set upon (whether by Indians or not seems doubtful) and cruelly murdered. After this adventurous officer the Gunnison river was named and afterwards Gunnison county. In 1854 the indomitable ‘Old Pathfinder,’ General Fremont, passed over nearly the same country from east to west and in his report paid glowing tribute to the beauty and wealth of these regions. It was not, however, until 1861, when some prospectors, approaching through California gulch, where Leadville now stands, gave names to Washington gulch, Taylor park, Rentz’s gulch, and Union park, that any positive development was undertaken. Then it was only on a very small scale, and although the discoveries they made created considerable excitement in mining circles, the fear of Indians was yet so great as to prevent any immigration of any consequence. This fear was heightened by the horrible discovery one morning of the massacre of twelve men in Washington gulch. This wholesale tragedy gave a gloomy side-defile the name of Dead Man’s gulch. The story of this outrage quickly spread throughout the entire country, each person coloring it as it went and adding a little to the horrors of the event. At this time nothing could tempt the daring miners of the adjacent and already populous Colorado gulches to risk their lives in this country. Even the most marvelous stories which were told of the golden bullets used by the Indians, and of mines to which El Dorado and Comstock and Golconda were vanities, failed to tempt their cupidity sufficiently to cause them to venture into the blood-christened country. A few, however, who had already forced their way in, earned a precarious livelihood in Washington gulch, fortified from the Indians and living for months at a time upon game and fish. In their leisure moments, between fighting Indians and hunting game, they occupied themselves in placer mining and, it is said, made from five to twenty dollars a day. Not until 1872, however, was any organized attempt made to open up the country. In that year Jim Brennen, of Denver, headed a small party of prospectors and located in the Rock Creek region.

“From this time really dates the origin of the mines, their reports being so enthusiastic that in 1873 Dr. John Parsons, Professor Richardson and thirty miners entered from Denver. One of the stories of this party which is told, but which is historically doubtful, runs to the effect that in pushing around by the southern entrance over the Saguache, General Charles Adams, who was then in charge of the frontier, forbade their further progress without the consent of the Utes. A heated debate is supposed to have arisen over the matter, which was settled by Chief Ouray himself, voting to grant them permission. In 1874 a colony was formed in Denver to settle upon and cultivate the Gunnison’s agricultural lands. Accordingly twenty men, all told, located themselves at various points upon Tomichi river and gave their special attention to ranches. The mining districts, however, on account of the Leadville and San Juan excitements, together with the difficulties and inconveniences of mining in this country at that time, did not really begin to grow until several years later.”

In the latter part of 1877 the state legislature set off Gunnison county, containing about twelve thousand square miles, or an area somewhat larger than the state of Connecticut. Three-fourths of it lay within the Ute Reservation, and it has since been subdivided into four new counties,—Gunnison (restricted to the eastern end), Montrose, Delta and Mesa. By 1880 matters began to assume a fixed condition. The people left their tents and sought more durable habitations. Business ceased to be desultory. The prospect-diggings, of which five thousand had been recorded, were developed as rapidly as possible, the buzz of the saw-mill and planer was heard, and smelters began to be erected.

Historically, there is little to add. Steady growth has benefited the city. New and large business blocks have been erected, a handsome hotel built, and a smelter put in operation. It has now a population of fully five thousand, is lighted with gas, and has a system of water-works. The streets are wide and clean; and the entire town has lost that frontier appearance which characterized it in its earlier days.

And Gunnison is a railway center. To the north the Denver and Rio Grande has extended a branch to Crested Butte and brought into closer communication with the outside world the adjoining mining towns of Irwin, Ruby, Gothic, and others of less importance. The road leads northward from Gunnison up the pointed valley until it gets close upon the bank of East river. Following the river, the valley narrows into a ravine, and some interesting masses of broken volcanic rocks, injected edgewise into the general sandstone strata, attract the eye.

It is the far-away landscape, nevertheless, that holds attention as we look backward. Rising above the level of the plain upon which the city is built, you can span with your vision hills and mesas southward, and behold “striking up the azure” a vast length of the ever-magnificent San Juan mountains,—the same glorious pinnacles that towered about us, near at hand, in Baker’s park. We could count the peaks by dozens if we tried, but it would be rash to try to name the separate points of the long serration. Many snow clouds have shed their burdens upon them since we saw them last, but to-day their heavens are clear and the sun blazes down upon scores of miles of lofty nêve fields, the uniform purity of which, at this distance, seems broken only by the shadows the higher peaks throw upon their lowlier companions and upon their own half-concealed sides. Gazing at them across the dim foreground of sage-plain, the middle scene of receding, intermingled, haze-obscured and bluish hills, we were more and more delighted with their loveliness,—a word whose propriety you will appreciate when you, too, have laid away this treasure of memory—one of the most entrancing bits of landscape in Colorado.

There are a few patches of rank meadow, but most of the way the hills run down so close to the river banks, that there is barely room for the road-bed to be made. Growing so close to the water that they are reflected in its depths, are sweet-smelling trees, tall, graceful, luxuriant, but in winter they bend beneath the snow that clings to them. Reaching to the top of the hills and completely covering them, are tangled masses of brush, pushed aside at times by forests of pines and torn asunder in places by the rocks that have lost their balance on some far summit and been rolled to the river below. In the narrowest places precipices menace each other across the stream; and on their faces, brown and weather-beaten, grow hardy shrubs, clinging to the crevices and hugging the bold headlands.

Nor does the valley afford satisfaction to the lover of what is only picturesque in nature. We have seen many a trout whipped from his cool retreat under the shadow of the rocks. The region is a sportsman’s paradise. Nature is at her best, the forests are full of health-giving odors, and a day’s tramp could not fail to bring color to the palest cheek, strength to the weakest body.

Twenty-eight miles north of Gunnison the narrow valley lets us into a snug little basin among the hills which border upon the Elk range, Slate river comes winding through it from the north, while Coal creek sweeps abruptly around a lofty spur at the left. Straight ahead, behind a green ridge, a white conical mountain stands challenging our admiration, and on our right a still nearer height rises like a mighty pyramid of gray stone from a richly verdant base.

The Madame gazes at them with delight a moment, but quickly glances with more eager interest to the meadow-land in which we are coming to a standstill, for the lush grass is dyed with innumerable flowers.

“Why Crested Butte?” she asks as the station sign comes in view.

I point, for reply, to the conical gray height which dominates the valley.

“That is neither a butte, nor is it crested,” she says. “A butte properly is not a peak of volcanic or primitive rock even if it is isolated—the proper name for that is ‘mountain’ or ‘spur.’ A butte is a hill of sedimentary rock, not mountain-like in appearance, and standing by itself in a flat region. Moreover there isn’t a bit of crest. Its apex is as sharp and round as a well-whittled pencil.”

“If you could look at it from the other side you might find a very well-marked crest.”

“But I can’t, and nobody does, see it from the other side. However”—and here her prerogative of inconsistency was exercised—“I am glad they adopted the mistake for now the town has a name worth remembering, something you can’t say of too many of these mountain villages.”

Crested Butte had the honor to be the first settlement in the Gunnison region. A recent review of its history says that in the spring of 1877 the Jennings brothers, who were hardy prospectors, penetrated as far as the Butte and were somewhat surprised and delighted at finding coal. Instantly turning their attention to that branch of mining they located some land. The fame of this discovery, blending with that of others, proved an incentive to the overflow from Leadville and the rest of Colorado. In 1877 a few men came in, but no effort was made even to survey the country until 1878. In that year Howard F. Smith dropped in and purchased some coal interests. He soon had the country surveyed, erected a store and advertised so well that within a few weeks a village had been started which is now one of the pleasantest summer places on the western slope, and can boast a hotel that has no superior in the Rocky mountains for comfort. This is the Elk Mountain house, and it is the property of the town-site company, who appreciate that the first impressions of a traveler (and possible settler) are largely colored by his early experiences in the matter of food and lodging.

No mines for gold and silver exist in the immediate vicinity of the village, though many “camps” in the Elk Mountains from five to twenty miles away are tributary to it; and the chief reliance and raison d’ être of the settlement is found in the coal-beds that are adjacent to it. These are of the greatest value and importance, and at night, when the blaze of the coke ovens sheds a lurid glare upon the overhanging woodlands and the snug town, one can appreciate the far-seeing expectations that lead the people there to call their town the Pittsburgh of the West.

Between two great foothills south and west of the town, flows a little creek whose channel is cut through five beds of coal, dipping southward, with the rest of the stratified rocks, at an angle of about six degrees; the lowest is ten feet in thickness, the others six, five, four and three feet. This coal is bituminous, and has been proved to be the best coking coal in the United States, as is shown by the following authoritative analysis:

The railway having reached Crested Butte, the coking veins are now well opened “by three drifts on water level, working the seam to the rise.” The mines are prepared for an output of four hundred to five hundred tons of coal per day, and the coke can be furnished to any extent, by the Colorado Coal and Iron Company, who own the mines. At first this coke was made in open pits, but now a long series of ovens has been built, and the railway tracks run to the ovens and almost to the mine-entrance. The cars drawn up the incline from the “breasts” to the surface, are thence dragged by mules through a quarter of a mile of sheds, built to guard against the deep winter snows, down to the ovens and the cars. Forty or fifty miners are employed at present, and these live with their families in large log houses built under the edge of the forested hill close to the mine.

The coke of all coal, being composed of fixed carbon and ash, depends for its value on the minimum of ash. The coke from the coal of Crested Butte contains from two to six per cent. less ash than the coke of the best eastern coals, its total of ash amounting only to six per cent. For all purposes of steam, this bituminous coal is said to have no superior on the continent. A well known mineralogist is reported to have said of it that, while a pound of Pennsylvania anthracite will make twenty-five pounds of steam, a pound of this bituminous coal will make twenty-three pounds; but while one pound of eastern anthracite is burning, two pounds of this will burn. Therefore, while the pound of Pennsylvania anthracite is making twenty-five pounds of steam, this coal will generate forty-six.

These coal-beds can be traced without difficulty up Slate river, exposed here and there in the western bluff, and can be found hidden in the opposite hills. As it is followed, however (rising in altitude with the upheaval toward the mountain-center), a change is seen to take place in its character. Two miles above the village it is neither soft nor hard; a little farther on, a part of the bed is decidedly anthracitic; while four miles above Coal creek, and at an elevation of a thousand feet or so above it, genuine anthracite of the best quality is mined from the same seams that, four miles below, yield the coking soft coal. “Nothing could be plainer, nor more beautiful to see,” than this practical demonstration of how under different conditions of heat and pressure, the same carbonaceous deposit becomes bituminous or anthracitic.

The anthracite mine is at the top of a wooded hill and is reached by one of the most entertaining roads in all Colorado. The coal-beds form strata right across the hill, so that the miners can run their tunnels out to daylight in any direction, and need not fear the gas which is so troublesome in the bituminous diggings below. The vein now worked is five feet thick at the entry, but increases to ten feet in thickness within. It is solid and pure, and is thrown down by blasting. The men are paid seventy-five cents per ton for breaking it into convenient pieces and loading it into the little cars. These cars are then drawn to the brow of the hill and dumped into larger cars which travel on a tramway sixteen hundred feet long, and most skillfully erected on a curved trestle, down to the breaker at the river level. This breaker is the only one west of Pennsylvania, and is capable of transmitting five hundred tons a day, properly crushed, to the railway cars, which run underneath its shutes.

The highest excellence is claimed for this anthracite coal by its owners, not only for domestic purposes, but in the making of steam. In price, this company is able to meet the Pennsylvanians at markets on the Missouri river, and to furnish all nearer points at a much lower rate than eastern shippers can afford; while they hope to secure a large part, if not the whole of the California business, which amounts to about fifty thousand tons annually. The mine and breaker have now been put in shape to yield steadily a large product; they are hereafter expected to be able to meet the whole demand. The anthracite beds in this region are believed to be very extensive, so that undoubtedly other mines will be opened as soon as a large enough demand will justify it. The discovery of these anthracite beds caused an immense excitement, for it was the first true hard coal found in the State; and a mob of men rushed in as though to an old-fashioned placer-find.

This region in 1879, indeed, caused a great flurry in the minds of prospectors who began to enter it at the risk of their lives long before it ceased to be an Indian reservation. As long ago as 1872 argentiferous quartz had been found in Rock creek just over the divide between these waters and the Roaring Fork of the Grand river, where Galena, Crystal, Treasure and Whopper mountains are seamed with large veins of comparatively low-grade, but easily smelted galena ore. The center of this district is Crystal City, and from that point prospectors pushed their way right and left as fast as they dared, and thus led to the opening of the Gunnison region.

It was not until 1879, however, that the precious metals were found in the southern slopes of the Elk mountains, and the region in which we are now interested was heralded abroad as the long-awaited El Dorado. Hundreds of men flocked in, striving to be first on the ground. A few of the earliest comers chose a spot at the base of the sharp, white mountain so plainly in view north of Crested Butte, and decided that a town must be placed there to be called Gothic—a name suggested by the appearance of some cliffs near by. It was done, and the people came to fill it. To it came all the business of the Brush creek, Rock creek, Copper creek, Sheep mountain, and Treasure mountain silver and gold mines, besides those nearer at hand—Schofield, Galena, Elko, Bellevue and others.

Another somewhat separate mining locality was one that we looked down upon as we stood at the mouth of the anthracite tunnel and gazed across the deep gorge which sank between this and the opposite hills, and down which flowed the gentle current of Slate river. The wall on the other side rose above the line of timber growth, and one peak showed an exposed face of brilliant red rock in high contrast to the blue-gray of the rest. Beneath it lay Redwell basin. At the right frightfully rough cliffs and forested crags shut in Oh-be joyful gulch, at the head of which, just out of sight, was Poverty gulch, while Peeler basin showed its edge. It seems to us that we can perceive through the clear atmosphere every tree and stone and crevice on the opposite slopes, though miles away, and can almost hear the prattle of the great waterfall that shines white in the shady bottom of the gorge; but we can see no signs whatever that a human being has ever been in all that area. Nevertheless over all that mountain side there is said to be scarcely an acre of ground not partially covered by mining claims, and upon some part of each one of these a discovery-shaft has been sunk. Many of the fissures thus disclosed are of immense size, carrying veins of argentiferous galena from three to nine feet in width, assaying on the surface from forty to one hundred and sixty ounces of silver to the ton. In some cases ruby silver or gray copper have been reached at forty or fifty feet in depth, assaying over one thousand ounces. At night the coal men see the opposite mountains dotted with camp-fires, and the merchants of Crested Butte will tell you that many a wagon-load and train of burros is packed with provisions for those apparent solitudes.

“What’s in a name!” exclaims the Madame as we are riding homeward, while talking over these districts and discussing the notable properties.

“Generally nothing,” it is replied, “so far as the designations of mines are concerned, but from the prevalent style of names in the whole district it would be possible to judge something of the men who settled it. Here, for instance, one can’t help noticing an absence of the rough gambling titles so common among California mines. The ‘Euchre Decks,’ the ‘Faro Banks,’ the ‘Little Brown Jugs,’ etc., are few, and in their place we find the ‘Shakespeare,’ the ‘Iron Duke,’ ‘Baron De Kalb,’ ‘Catapult,’ and others with similar literary, historical or mythological meanings. It is evident that no rude typical miner presided at their christening, but that intelligent, and in many cases highly educated, men discovered and named them.”

Eight miles northwest of Crested Butte are the almost united towns of Ruby and Irwin, which, in 1879 and ’80, had “booms,” but now are almost deserted. The neighborhood abounds in silver, but it has been found that too many obstacles stand in the way of successfully working the mines, which are very high, and in a region famous for its deep snows, until the science of ore-treatment has progressed, and cheaper methods of operation and transportation have been devised.

Leaving Chum to take the Madame and the train back to Gunnison, I left Crested Butte on the morning after our ride to the anthracite mine, on my way to Lake City, discouraging all company.

XXVI
A TRIP TO LAKE CITY.

—Whittier.

Lake City is a mining town at the foot of the San Juan mountains thirty miles south of the railway station of Sapinero (the latter named after a sub chief among the Utes who was looked upon by the whites as a man of unusual sagacity). It was at that time reached by a buckboard, carrying the mail and passengers.

The stage-road led up a long, long hill to the top of the mesa between the Cochetopa and the Lake Fork of the Gunnison. This much of the way was in the track of the old southern road to California, which came up from Santa Fe to Taos, San Luis park, Saguache, and so on over here along the Cochetopa, striking the Gunnison river just above this point and continuing on down to the Uncompahgre, where it crossed the Gunnison to the northern bank and pushed westward to Utah. This was the route followed by Captain Gunnison in 1853, and it came to be known as the Salt Lake Wagon Road; and the whole course of the Denver and Rio Grande railway follows it closely from Grand Junction to the Wasatch mountains. The road is still occasionally traveled for short distances by light wagons and by men driving bands of horses, who wish to escape paying the tolls demanded along the new and improved roads, so that it is in no danger of becoming obliterated.

From the top of this high plateau, a great picture opens before the eye, in all directions. Northward the peaks of the Elk range form a long line of well-separated summits. Northeastward, the vista between nearer hills is filled with the clustered heights of the Continental Divide in the neighborhood of the Mount of the Holy Cross. Just below them confused elevations show where Marshall pass carries its lofty avenue, and to the southward of that stretches the splendid, snow-trimmed array of the Sangre de Cristo. They fill beautifully the far eastern horizon, and end southward in the massive buttresses of Sierra Blanca, of which no more impressive view can be had than this elevated standpoint affords. As we advance a few miles other mountains rise into sight straight ahead,—that is, in the southward. These are the cold and broken summits of the Sierra San Juan; while isolated from them, and a little to the right, stands the Saul of their ranks,—Uncompahgre peak, head and shoulders above all his comrades. Nor is this figure an idle comparison, for his tenon shaped apex easily suggests it.

Half way to our destination, the crazy buckboard rattles us painfully down a steep and stony hill into the valley of the Lake Fork of the Gunnison, where there is room for several ranches whose fields of hay and oats show a plentiful growth, and whose potato-patches are something admirable. The best of these is Barnum’s, where there is also a store and a post-office, and where your “humble correspondent,” supposing himself about to lay his head upon a soft bag of oats, nearly dashed his brains out by hurling it in misplaced confidence against a marble-solid bag of salt. Eheu! miserere me!

When we had wound our way farther up the narrow cañon into which the valley contracted on the further side of this gateway, there came to view the precise similitude (but here on a lesser scale) of the massive, pillared, mitre-crowned cliffs that form the shores of the Columbia river between Fort Vancouver and The Dalles.

As a mining-town Lake City is not now so active as formerly. It stands in a little park at the junction of the Lake Fork (of the Gunnison) with Henson creek,—both typical mountain streams, each wavelet flecked with foam and sparkling like the back of the trout it hides. Henson creek became especially famous among prospectors, who found that, however large an army of miners might flock in there, new veins were always to be had as the reward of diligent searching. Thus a populous and highly enterprising town arose, which became the supply point for a wide mountain region, owing to its accessibility from both north and south; and though it was over one hundred miles—mountain miles at that!—from a railway, more than ten million pounds of merchandise, and five million pounds of mining machinery and supplies were taken in on wagons during 1880, at a cost of over a million dollars for transportation alone. A very good class of people went to Lake City, too, so that a substantial and pretty town arose, school-houses and churches were built, and I have never seen a mining camp where the bookstores and news-stands were so well furnished and patronized. At the beginning of 1881 about two thousand people lived in the town itself, not counting the great number of men in the mountains round about; and three factories for the treatment of ores were in operation.

Since then, however, Lake City has retreated somewhat; not that the mines have proved false to the confidence placed in them, but because it has been shown that until cheaper methods of transportation and more economic treatment can be devised, the mines cannot be worked to the same profit which a similar investment in some neighboring districts will return. This is due to the fact that the ores, of marvelous value when their mass is considered, are of too low grade, as a rule, to afford a high margin over the expenses of working. This by no means condemns the district; it only causes its stores of wealth to be held in abeyance for a while before their coinage. Many another district, a few years ago thought equally profitless, has risen to become the scene of steady dividend-making labor through the perfection of processes. It will not be long, before, by like means, the reviving of Lake City’s mines will occur, and enable her to catch up with her more fortunate sisters in the wide circle of the San Juan silver-region.

But when that time has come,—though the Alpine grandeur of the scenery cannot be lost, the splendid shooting and fishing which now make the village one of the favored resorts of the west, will have disappeared; and there are some of us, more sentimental than world-wise, who will regret the change. Over these rolling uplands, among the aspen groves, upon the foothills and along the willow-bordered creek deers now throng, and even an occasional elk and antelope are to be seen. In the rocky fastnesses the bear and panther find refuge, and every little park is enlivened by the flitting forms of timid hares and the whirring escape of the grouse disturbed by our passing. Upon these lofty, grass-grown plateaus, some cattle already get excellent feeding; and the time will be short before they are multiplied into the vast herds whose pasturage will be economised by good management, and for which a market will be found within a few days drive of the range. Too high and arid for extensive farming, the opposite, yet inter-dependent, pursuits of mining and cattle-raising, will ere long bring all this elevated interior of the state into full utilization. When one wonders how this railway company is to support itself amid the wilds, this future must be remembered.

XXVII
IMPRESSIONS OF THE BLACK CAÑON.

By what furnaces of fire the adamant was melted, and by what wheels of earthquake it was torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight of sea waves it was engraven and finished into perfect form, we may hereafter endeavor to conjecture.

—John Ruskin.

It was with eager interest that we despatched a hasty breakfast, and attached our cars to the early morning express westward bound from Gunnison. The Grand Cañon of the Gunnison lay just ahead. An open “observation” car, crowded with sightseers, was hooked on behind us, but that did not interfere with our favorite rear platform, and thither our camp-stools were taken.

This river Gunnison has a hard time of it. The streams that finally unite to make it up, are loath to do so, and it came near not being born at all. The flat country we see just below the town vouchsafes a few quiet miles under the cottonwoods, but presently the hills close in, and then the river must needs gird up its loins for a struggle such as few other streams in the wide world know. Its life thenceforth is that of a warrior; and it never lays aside its knightly armor till the very end in the absorbing flood of the Grand.

Above the rattle of the train, echoing from the rocky highlands that hem it in, we can hear the roaring of this water as we thunder down its sinuous course toward Sapinero. Great fragments that have fallen from the steep banks, where an avalanche of stones lies precariously as though even the shock of our passing would set them sliding, fret the stream with continual interruptions and turn its green flood into lines of yeasty white. These same rocks are admirable fishing-stands, however, for the trout love the deeply aërated water that swirls about them; and we see more than one silvery fin snatched from its crystal home to hang in mute misery upon the angler’s switch of forked willow.

“Do you think it’s right?” asks the Madame, with a pitiful tone in her voice.

“No, but it can’t be helped; and you’ll find some casuistry to meet the case about dinner-time.”

“Casuistry—casuistry?” says Chum reflectively. “Is that a new kind of sauce?”

Ahead the green hills, marked with horizontal lines, that we suspect to indicate outcroppings of lava, shut quite across our path. Nevertheless we can detect a dark depression toward which the track points straight as an arrow, and we suppose that at that point an entrance exists. Behind it stood summits so lofty that this barrier did not seem imposing; but now that a gateway has opened (yet far enough only for our track to enter by encroaching on the river’s highway), we are surprised at the altitude of the walls which momently rise higher and higher on each side, as though we were descending a steep incline into the earth. At what an abyss must the river lie in the middle of the range!

The early morning sun streams warm and rich into the cañon, dispelling the nocturnal chill and making the air delightful beyond expression. We are hurled along between close-shutting crags that are the type of solidity, yet seem to waver and topple at their summits as we gaze at them, cut strongly against the tremulous blue of the sky. Our ears are assaulted by the crashing of iron against iron and steam shrieking at the wind, and by the roar and dashing of enraged and baffled water. The lyric sweetness of the distant hill-picture caught in our backward glance as we entered the gates of the cañon, is gone; the poetry of this scene has the epic dignity and the stirring excitement of a war-story sung on the eve of righteous battle. This is the site and the monument of a struggle between forces such as we have no capacity to comprehend. Take a fragment of this shining rock not so large but that you may lift it, and you will find that studied ingenuity, and the vigorous application of power that men speak of as enormous, are required to break it into smaller pieces. Yet here are masses many hundreds of feet high and wide, that have been riven as I might halve a piece of clay. You may say it was done thus, or so. No matter, the impression of stupendous power remains and imprints itself deeply on the mind. Here for miles we pass between escarpments of rock, a thousand, fifteen hundred—ay, here and there more than two thousand feet high. This is not a valley between mountains with sloping sides slowly worn away. Here are vertical exposures that fit together like mortise and tenon; facing cliffs that might be shut against one another so tightly that almost no crevice would remain. To view this mighty chasm thoughtfully, is to receive a revelation of the immeasurable power pent up in the elements whose equilibrium alone forms and preserves our globe; and if we call it “awful,” the word conveys not so much a dread of any harm that might happen to us there, as the vague and timorous appreciation of the dormant strength under our feet. If the gods we call dynamic can rive a pathway for a river through twenty miles of solid granite, of what use is any human safeguard against their anger?

But away with these serious thoughts! The cliffs are founded in unknown depths it is true, but their heads soar into the sunlight, and break into forms not too great for us to grasp. Straight from the liquid emerald frosted with foam which flecks their base—straight as a plummet’s line, and polished like the jasper gates of the Eternal city, rise these walls of echoing granite to their dizzy battlements. Here and there a promontory stands as a buttress; here and there a protruding crag overhangs like a watch-tower on a castle-wall; anon you may fancy a monstrous profile graven in the angle of some cliff,—a gigantic Hermes rudely fashioned. In one part of the cañon where the cliffs are highest, measuring three thousand feet from the railway track to the crown of their haughty heads, faces of the red granite, hundreds of feet square, have been left by a split occurring along a natural cleavage-line; and these are now flat as a mirror and almost as smooth. On the other hand, you may see places where the rocks rise, not solid, sheer and smooth, but so crumpled and contorted that the partition-lines, instead of running at right angles, are curved, twisted and snarled in the most intricate manner, showing that violent and conflicting agitations of the rock must have occurred there at a time when the whole mass was heated to plasticity. In another place, the cliff on the southern side breaks down and slopes back in a series of interrupted and irregular terraces, every ledge and cranny having a shapely tree; while not far away another part of the long escarpment, the rocky layers, turned almost on edge, have been somewhat bent and broken, so that they lie in imbricated tiers upon the convex slopes, as if placed there shingle-fashion.

Just opposite, a stream whose source is invisible has etched itself a notched pathway from the heights above. It plunges down in headlong haste until there comes a time when there is no longer rock for it to flow upon, and it flings itself out into the quiet air, to be blown aside and made rainbows of, to paint upon the circling red cliffs a wondrous picture in flashing white, and then to fall with soft sibilancy into the river. The river has no chance to do so brave a thing as this leap of Chippeta falls from the lofty notch; but seeing a roughened and broken place ahead where the fallen bowlders have raised a barrier, it goes at it with a rush and hurls its plumes of foam high overhead, as, with swirl and tumult, and a swift shooting forth of eddies held far under its snowy breast, it bursts through and over the obstacle and sweeps on, conqueror to the last.

In the very center of the cañon, where its bulwarks are most lofty and precipitous, unbroken cliffs rising two thousand feet without a break, and shadowed by overhanging cornices,—just here stands the most striking buttress and pinnacle of them all,—Currecanti Needle. It is a conical tower standing out somewhat beyond the line of the wall, from which it is separated (so that from some points of view it looks wholly isolate,) on one side by a deep gash, and on the other by one of those narrow side-cañons which in the western part of the gorge occur every mile or two. These ravines are filled with trees and make a green setting for this massive monolith of pink stone whose diminishing apex ends in a leaning spire that seems to trace its march upon the sweeping clouds.

It was in the recesses of the rift beside Currecanti Needle, says a tradition which at least is poetic, that the red men used to light the midnight council-fires around which they discussed their plans of battle. Though judgment may refuse the fact, fancy likes to revel in such a scene as that council-fire would have made, deep in the arms of the rocky defile. How the fitful flashes of the pungent cedar-flame would have driven back the lurking darkness that pressed upon it from all sides! How, now and then starting up, the blaze-light would sally forth and suddenly disclose some captive of the gloom rescued from oblivion—perhaps a mossy bowlder, an aged juniper, a ghostly cottonwood stump, or a ledge of sleeping blossoms! How the bright and polished rocks would be re-reddened and sparkle at their angles under the glancing light; while the pretty soprano of the stream and the deep bass of the river’s roar sang a duet to the narrow line of stars that could peep down between the cañon walls! Surely the time and place were suitable for planning the lurid warfare of a savage race; and as these untamed men, their muscular limbs and revengeful faces, disclosed uncertainly, like the creatures of a flitting fantasy, in the red firelight, enacted with terrifying gestures the fierce future of their plotting, a spectator might well think himself with fiends,

“On Night’s plutonian shore,”

or else discard the whole picture as only the fantastic scenery of some disordered dream.

Opposite Currecanti Needle and cañon stand some very remarkable rocks, underneath the greatest of which the train passes. Then there is a long bridge to cross where the river bends a little; and perhaps the echoing chasm will be filled with the hoarsely repeated scream of a warning whistle. And so, past wonder after wonder, Pelion upon Ossa, buried in a huge rocky prison, yet always in the full sunlight, you suddenly swing round a sharp corner, leaving the Gunnison to go on through ten miles more of cañon, and crashing noisily through the zigzag cañon of the Cimmaron, which is so very narrow and dark it deserves no better name than crevice, quickly emerge into daylight and a busy station.

Thus I have tried to give the reader some trifling indication of what he may expect to see during his hour in the heart of the “Black” cañon, which is not black at all but the sunniest of places. I cannot understand how the name ever came to be applied to it. No Kobolds delving in darkness would make it their home; but rather troops of Oreades, darting down the swift green shutes of water between the spume-wet bowlders, dancing in the creamy eddies, struggling hand over hand up the lace ladders of Chippeta Falls, to tumble headlong down again, making the prismatic foam resound with the soft tinkling of their merry laughter. All the Sprites of the cañon are beings of brightness and joy. The place is full of gayety.

This sense of color and light is perhaps the strongest impression that remains. Though it is quite as deep and precipitous as the Royal gorge it is not so gloomy and frowning; though the cataracts are greater than those at Toltec, they are not so fear-inspiring. In place of dark and impenetrable walls, here are varied façades of lofty and majestic design, yet each unlike its neighbor and all of the most brilliant hue. The cliffs are architectural, suggestive of human kinship and more than marvelous—they are interesting.

Then there is the brilliant and resistless river. At Toltec it is only a murmuring cataract; in the Royal gorge a stream you may often leap across; the Rio de Las Animas is deep and quiet. But here rushes along its gigantic flume a great volume of hurried water, rolled over and over in headlong haste, hurled against solid abutments to recoil in showers of spray or to sheer off in sliding masses of liquid emerald. Now some quiet nook gives momentary rest. The water is still and deep. Small rafts of seedy foam swing slowly around the edges, tardy to dissolve. The rippled sand can be seen in wavy lines far underneath like the markings on a duck’s breast. The surplus water curves like bent glass over the dam that rims the pool on its lower side, and beyond is a whirlpool of foam and the hissing tumult of shattered waves amid which rise the sharp crests of crimson bowlders flounced with snowy circles of foam.